A blog to communicate, discuss, and advocate for the civil rights and important role Small Flock Poultry Farmers can play (and should play) in Canadian Society.
Small Flockers are on the side of justice & truth, and against privilege & power. Unfortunately, the more we compromise with privilege and power, the more we reduce the capacity for truth and justice.

Monday, February 6, 2017

Selling Your Chickens

Dear Small Flockers:

We are an artisanal farmer who grew chicken last year. We still have quite a bit of chicken left that we processed in November. They were grown free range and on a vegetable based feed. They average 4.5 lbs dressed and they are frozen and whole in vacuum packaging.
Do you know of anyone looking for free range chicken?
We are just deciding how much to grow this year. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,

Dear Artisanal Chicken Farmer:

Thanks for contacting me.

When CFO announced the Artisanal Chicken program, I had a tough
decision to make: stay Small Flock, or become an Artisanal
Chicken farmer. Everybody told me the customers would beat a path
to my door, so I applied for and was authorized to raise 3,000
chickens last year, the max. available.

I decided to do grass pastured, free range chickens as I feel
this is the best opportunity, the type of chickens people want the
most, people are willing to pay a premium price, and have much
less competition with the commercial, factory farm chickens that
are sometimes sold as a "lost leader" in grocery stores (as low as
$1.49 per lb). Statistics Canada reports the average fresh whole
chicken retail price in Ontario in 2015 is $6.69/kg ($3.04/lb). The average price for 2016 was $6.59/kg ($3.00 per lb.), down an average of 4.03% per year.

In my home town market, the historic market leader for commercial, locally grown barn raised chickens are raised and sold at $3.85/lb in
2016. I decided to sell our chickens at $4.50/lb, then backed off to $3.85/lb for fresh, never frozen (only
available the 2 days after we go to the abattoir). I now sell frozen
chickens at $4.50/lb due to the higher cost to freeze and store them
long term. In Ottawa, they sell grass pastured whole chickens at
$6.00/lb. in retail stores.

When I ask other Artisanal Chicken farmers: "Is it tougher to
grow them, or sell them?", everybody agrees selling is the tougher
nut to crack.

Unfortunately, I too have many chickens raised in 2016 that I still need to
sell. When I calculate that my first flock was available to sell
in June 2016, and the last was November 2016, and my next flock thereafter
will only be ready in June 2017, so there is a 7 month
hibernation when frozen chicken must supply the local demand. At the
rate of sale from June to Nov. 2016, if I project that same rate for
the 7 months of winter 2016-2017, I come very close to 3,000 chickens total that will be sold. That calculation suggest that my freezers will run empty just as the first flock of 2017 is ready to go to the abattoir.
Therefore, maybe I shouldn't worry.

However, projections to the future are very inaccurate. Rather
than trust in this bare hope for the future, I suggest a proactive
approach.

Here are some ideas to get your Artisanal chickens sold (* marks the ones I have personally done or tried to do for my farm):

* Local radio station spot ads

* Google Adwords ads

* Internet website

* Internet Blog postings (daily or weekly)

* Facebook

* Twitter

* Local newspaper ads

* Letters to Editor for local newspaper

Op-Ed article in local newspaper

* Year-round "farmers markets".

* Local seasonal Farmer's Markets and other rural markets

* Local butcher shops

* Convenience stores

* Local restaurants

* Local hotel restaurants & conference centres

Banquet halls

* Catering companies

* Grocery Stores

Wedding planners and their clients

* Abattoirs that have retail/wholesale meat shops attached
thereto

* Meat wholesalers

* Halal community (must be decided before abattoir, and killed
in conformity thereto)

* Kosher community (must be decided before abattoir, and killed
in conformity thereto; much more demanding than Halal, needs
Kosher certification by COR or equivalent)

* On-line Internet Marketing

* CSA (Community Support Agriculture)

* Food Hubs

* Organic food stores

* Local food stores

Farmer Co-ops

Community presentations at local halls where you invite the
public to learn about sustainable farming, then sample your
roasted chicken, and can place an order

* Partner with a local appliance store for a 10%+ discount for
your customers to buy a freezer to store their own food, then
fill it with your produce.

Home food delivery route

Buy a used propane fired convection oven, put it in an enclosed utility trailer,
find a grid of sites (every compass point) around your farm
where you can go to sell roast chicken (whole roasted chicken to take home, or 1/4 chicken dinners for one person), advertise that you will be at that site on a
regular basis arranged in a sequence that doesn't rob customers
today from where you will be next time. Start small so you are
sure to sell out, or you can eat your unsold product excess (or
sell it as frozen cubed chicken pieces for chicken Caesar salads
or stir frys). Record the time of each sale. As soon as you
sell out, leave a sign that late arriving customers know they
missed out, call this # to reserve a chicken for next week, and
head home with your cash. Based on your sale rate, estimate how
many chickens you can sell in a reasonable time on location.

1 comment:

Off-topic commercial spam that's posted so as to help sell your wares will be deleted.

On-topic comments, where you behave yourself and play nicely, will remain posted; whether they are pro or con. Everybody needs to fully understand all points of view so that we can find a solution that encompasses everybody's concerns. Give it your best shot.

If you decide to post, your posting becomes part of the public record, and SFPFC has full rights to use it (or not) in any reasonable manner or medium that suits our purposes.

Before posting, please proofread, and correct as necessary. If you subsequently discover a need to fix your previous posting, make an additional posting that refers to the original posting, then set the record straight.